


a life of surprises

by onyourleft084



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dinner, Established semi-relationship, F/M, Fluff, Guilt and Angst, Marriage Proposal, Nat keeps surprising Matt, Sexual Tension, Wanda reads minds, where the hell is foggy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8196502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onyourleft084/pseuds/onyourleft084
Summary: 'Never let your conscience be harmful to your healthLet no neurotic impulse turn inward on itselfJust say that you were happy, as happy would allowAnd tell yourself that that will have to do for now'- A Life of Surprises (Prefab Sprout) Natasha is warm, supple weight in his lap, the brush of soft red curls and strong hands cradling his jaw. Tonight she is more than a surprise or a delightful visitor or even a comforting lover. Matt holds her, and she becomes a promise, a certainty within a string of uncertain things.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this fic in my iPad for a while now. Can't even remember why I didn't post it sooner. Well, it's here now, and it's all fluff...and nothing hurts

On Sunday morning, Matt wakes up next to a redhead. Which is funny, because he can't recall going to sleep next to a redhead.

There's a split second of panic-- _somebody's sleeping in my bed_ \-- which goes away almost immediately when he recognizes the breathing pattern and heartbeat. Of course it's Natasha-- it wouldn't be anybody but her. Matt figures she'd come in late after a mission; she's still wearing her black catsuit, minus the boots and the straps and holsters for various weapons (which he suspects have been left lying about the floor in typical Natasha fashion) but he kisses her shoulder anyway.

"Well, this is a surprise," he says, when Natasha stirs and blinks at him.

"Oh, hey," she mumbles groggily.

"'Oh, hey'?" Matt chuckles, wrapping an arm around her. "That's all you can say after you let yourself into my house and climb into my bed?"

"The couch was cold," she protests sleepily, pulling a sheet over herself.

"What about 'good morning, sweetie'? Or 'sorry I came here so suddenly'? Hell, what about 'Hi, Matt, can I crash here for the night?"

"Fine," says Natasha, "Can I crash here for the night?"

Matt kisses her cheek, "I'll think about it." He rolls out of bed. "You came straight back from the field?"

"Yep."

"So what happened?"

"Classified." Natasha pushes her head under a pillow. "Classified got me exhausted."

Matt sits on the side of the bed, watching this deadly assassin take up his space, and decides to let her keep her secrets.

"I just need some more shut eye, is it okay?" She asks next.

"Well, I have church in another hour," he says, rising and crossing the room (nearly tripping on one of Natasha's holsters). "I'll be back by ten-thirty."

"Mm-hmm."

Matt pauses in the doorway. He looks back at her, a spill of red hair and a heap underneath the sheets all the indication that she's even there at all.

He realizes he likes this. Not just waking up next to her-- it's happened more times than it should have in the past year-- but this, whatever it was between them, the surprises and the intimacy and the sort of trust you just couldn't find in abundance these days.

"Will you still be here then, Nat?" He asks.

The answer rises groggily from under the sheets, "Of course, baby."

 _Baby_. She must really be exhausted.

Matt smiles to himself and shuts the bedroom door behind him.

~

He comes back home to find a full English breakfast courtesy of Natasha, who's exchanged the catsuit for a bathrobe. She grins at him coyly when he walks through the door.

Matt sighs resignedly. "Seriously? I just come from church and you try to drag me back into sin?"

Natasha spreads her hands. "Hey, I had nothing else to wear. Now sit down, or the food isn't the only thing that's gonna get cold."

She leaves, afterward. She has to. He lets her go, because that's the way they roll. She doesn't say when she'll be back, because she's never sure.

The kiss she leaves with Matt is half-apologetic that she can't give him any more than cryptic explanations and visits that don't last longer than a night and the morning after.

He doesn't ask when she'll return. He suspects that will just have to be a surprise.

* * *

 

The rest of Natasha's week is jam-packed with activity, with Quinjet rides to exotic places and plans of action that have to either be followed down to the last detail or thrown out of the window in favor of improvisation. She does her bit, breaks some bones, keeps the team in line, saves some lives. But in the middle of a debriefing, or on the long flight home, or during one of those refreshment breaks Vision keeps insisting on giving them (citing a long list of the benefits of coffee and tea) Natasha finds herself unfocusing. Thinking of something-- someone-- else.

"Who's the man with the red glasses?" Wanda asks her one day.

Natasha nearly snaps the table in half. "What?"

The girl instantly recoils. "The man-- I'm sorry, Agent Romanoff. I just...seem to be getting that image a lot from you lately. From inside your head."

Natasha looks around. They're the only ones in the common area at the moment, while Steve is off visiting Peggy and Sam is at a VA meeting. Thankfully.

"Wanda," says Natasha, obviously surprised, but trying to be gentle. "It's rude to look into other peoples' minds without permission."

"I know. Sometimes I just can't help it, especially if the thought is very frequent." Wanda pauses. She leans in, and then she's no longer a high-strung girl with a mystical power nobody understands; she's a young lady interested in a friend's love life. "So, um, who is he?"

Natasha glowers. "Classified."

It scares Wanda from mentioning it ever again, which suits Nat just fine.

At some point during the week, the Avengers leave for missions where, miraculously, Natasha isn't needed. She doesn't fancy rattling around the HQ on her own, so she hops on her motorbike and looks for trouble.

Trouble in Manhattan, that is.

She finds it.

  
In the warehouse district of Hell's Kitchen, Daredevil is locked in a fierce battle with a drug cartel receiving their latest shipments. It's hardly a fair fight.

Then Natasha enters the fray, and now the odds even out.

"Well," huffs Matt, as a well-timed stun bolt from her widows' sting bracelets take out the large thug trying to strangle him, "this is a surprise."

"You look like you could use the help," Natasha says. "Watch your back, blind boy."

Matt grins wickedly. He tosses his billy club just an inch from her ear, knocking out the last attacker coming up behind her. Natasha swirls around, astonished.

He catches the club as it ricochets back. "Says you."

She turns to look at him. "Where did you learn that? Because that is sexy."

"I'm working, Widow," Matt says with mock self-righteousness. "Shouldn't you be?"

"I had the night off."

"And you decided to spend it with me."

"Yeah."

"I'm touched."

Natasha raises her eyebrows at him flirtatiously. "You will be."

Matt's voice is almost a low purr. "Then I guess we should wrap this up for tonight."

~

It's become a routine. Bed. Shower. Breakfast. Goodbye. Conversations in between that make Matt feel real and make Natasha feel more alive. Always a lingering kiss in the doorway that has to end.

Natasha's visits become more frequent.

She thinks, _I should stop._

Matt thinks, _I hope she doesn't stop._

They both know she won't.

She comes in one evening, in the hope of surprising him again, and makes dinner. She's been practicing (with a little help from Vision.) Cooking isn't a skill taught in the Red Room, and Matt's senses are so developed he'll instantly notice if anything is off-flavor. Of course, he'll probably lie to her and say that everything tastes great, but Natasha doesn't want to run the risk.

"Everything has to be perfect," she mutters to herself while lighting candles all around the apartment.

He comes in late, as she expected, through the roof deck door, still wearing the mask and suit. But something has gone wrong. Natasha knows, by the droop of his head and shoulders and the drag of his step.

But he tries to smile. "Well, this is a surprise."

"Matt?" Natasha instantly asks, intent on cutting the bullshit. "Are you okay?"

He sits down on the couch heavily. "Yeah. Well, no."

She vaults over the backrest and lands seated next to him. "What happened?"

He tells her. A bus robbery downtown, two armed men. He took them down, but couldn't stop a stray bullet from hitting the driver. It's one casualty in a busload of terrified, but unharmed, civilians, yet it weighs down on Matt like a millstone.

"I should've been there," Natasha says.

Matt shakes his head. "This is on me."

"You saved the others, Matt."

"I should have been able to save all of them." He looks at her through the mask, "This is the first time that's happened. I didn't think of how hard it would be. If it happens again? And again and again? How am I supposed to deal with that? How is this city supposed to trust me?"

"Welcome to the life superheroic, I guess," Natasha says with a weary shrug.

His voice is sharp, "But if we let things like this slip through our fingers, no matter how hard we try, then what's the point? What's the point of trying to help at all?"

Silence falls.

She crawls into his lap and pulls the helmet off him. There's something in his sightless eyes that turn the dull brown into molten gold under candlelight.

"Matt. Look at me."

He gives her a deadpan stare. "I can't fucking see you, remember?"

Natasha excuses the rude language for his upset state. "Look at me anyway."

Matt reaches up and brushes her lips with his fingers, "That's your face, isn't it?"

"No, it's Tony Stark's."

That elicits a weak laugh from him. "Okay, okay. I'm looking at you. What do you want to say?"

"Nothing," Natasha replies. "I just want you to look at me. I want you to know I'm here, and I always will be." She sets the helmet aside. "Lately I've learned that there are just some things we're not meant to carry on our own."

Matt lifts his chin a little bit, "But you carry a lot of stuff on your own, Nat."

She tries to convince herself there isn't a hint of angst in his voice (it's Matt, though. There's a hint of angst in everything.) And he's right; there are terrible things from her past, some of them her own doing, that she can't bear to bring down here and show him, no matter how much awfulness he thinks he can handle.

"Not the things we did wrong," Natasha says, slowly, "but the things we failed to do. Sometimes it hits us hard. People in our line of work need a support system."

"Is this a lame attempt to get me to join the Avengers?" Matt mumbles.

Natasha makes a noise that's between a laugh and a scoff. "No. I gave up on that a long time ago." She gives him a wry smile. "What I meant was, the next time something goes wrong-- and it will-- I'll be here. I'll be all the team you need."

Natasha is warm, supple weight in his lap, the brush of soft red curls and strong hands cradling his jaw. Tonight she is more than a surprise or a delightful visitor or even a comforting lover. Matt holds her, and she becomes a promise, a certainty within a string of uncertain things.

"All right," he murmurs. "Thank you. But promise me. If you need it too, tell me." He feels the slight catch in Natasha's breath before she can decide whether to protest or not. "The next time you have those nightmares, the ones that make your heart rate spike in the middle of the night--"

"You can hear that?" Natasha says, surprised. She pauses, and then states, "You can hear that. Of course."

Matt continues, determined. "When you wake up, talk to me, okay?"

"I can't--" she pulls away.

He pulls her back. "Try me."

"They're called bad dreams for a reason."

"You think those reasons will change the way I feel about you?"

She stares at him and realizes they won't.

Matt pulls her close against his chest, and for a minute they're just holding each other on the couch in the dim living room.

Natasha eventually reminds him that there's food.

"Oh," says Matt. "Right."

* * *

 

She leaves the next morning, unexpectedly and suddenly. There's an Avengers emergency at the crack of dawn. Natasha springs out of bed to answer her phone, and before Matt can blink she's back in the catsuit, in full battle gear, ready to rock.

She climbs out the window and pauses. "Will you be okay without me?"

"I'm gonna be fine," he assures her.

Natasha gives him a goodbye kiss as always, and then she's gone.

~

Matt has a whole week to think about it. But, he realizes, he doesn't really have to. He knows exactly what he wants in almost a split second.

He waits for her, ready for the next time she comes.

She climbs in through the window, looking tired and a hundred percent done with Hydra's shit, but lights up when she notices Matt with the flowers.

"Well," Natasha says, "this is a surprise."

She tries to kiss him, but he holds her back for a second. "Nat?" He clears his throat. "Natasha. I'd use your full birth name, but I'm not sure what it really is." Nervous chuckle. "And, uh, you've been surprising me a lot lately, so I thought tonight I would surprise you."

Puzzled, Natasha looks at him scrutinizingly. Flowers. Awkward verbosity. An apprehensive body language. "Matt, do you want something?"

He lets his shoulders fall and looks at her honestly. "Well, actually." Matt takes her hand. "I want you to marry me."

And here Nat was thinking that she'd seen it all.

But she's never seen a nervous blind man holding a bouquet and wanting her, wanting her so badly, that he's anxious to hear her response.

And she thinks of everyone she never let herself get attached to and how it was a good strategy, at first, until she switched sides and met Clint and became an Avenger and danced with the devil--

Time is standing still. Matt is waiting.

"Okay," he says at last, exhaling, "I might sound like a fucking cliche. But that night last week, when you left on the emergency call, I realized, heck, I can't live without you. I don't want to live without you." He pauses. "I just thought-- you know, you never do anything without reason. Maybe this would be reason enough for you to keep coming back every time you have to go."

She folds her other hand on top of his. "You're an idiot, Matt Murdock," Natasha tells him. "Can't you see I'm already yours?"

"Please tell me that's a yes."

"Yes, yes," she rolls her eyes, and slides her hands up his shoulders. "For better or worse, through crazy and normal, till death-- or the sinking realization that this was a bad idea-- do us part..."

"Hang on," says Matt with a chuckle, "if you have any reservations--"

She looks at him. She doesn't. In fact, she's never been more sure of anything in her life.

Natasha leans in, resting her forehead against Matt's. "No, I don't. No, I don't want to live without you, either. And yes, I want to marry you. I want to be all the team you need."

His smile is wider than she's ever seen it.

"Okay, then."

Natasha holds him tight, still trying to get used to what happy feels like. "There's one more thing." She turns her head and whispers in his ear, "Natalia Alianovna Romanova."

"What?"

"That's my full birth name," she explains.

Matt blinks, leaning back to look at her. "Okay. So, then..." He gets down on one knee, "Natalia Alianovna Romanova...

 

"Will you marry me?"

 

 

 

 


End file.
